Chapter 2

The word "divorce" hung in the air, thick and poisonous.

Olivia' s panic instantly shifted into a different kind of fear. It wasn't the shock of seeing a ghost anymore, it was the cold, calculating fear of a criminal about to be exposed. Bigamy was a serious crime. Fraud, too.

"Ethan, please," she said, her voice suddenly soft and pleading. She took a step toward him, trying to touch his arm. "Let's not do this here. Let's talk about this, just the two of us."

He pulled his arm away as if her touch would burn him.

"We're past talking, Olivia."

Daniel stepped forward, positioning himself fully between Ethan and Olivia. "You heard her. Get out. We can have our lawyers talk."

"Oh, we will," Ethan said, a humorless smile touching his lips. "But I'm enjoying this family reunion."

His father finally found his voice, stern and commanding as always. "Ethan, stop this nonsense. You show up out of nowhere after three years and expect to just destroy everything Olivia has built? She has been good to us. She took care of your mother and me, she helped Sarah with her college tuition, she gave Mark a job. What have you done?"

The hypocrisy was breathtaking. "What have I done?" Ethan repeated, his voice low. "I worked my hands to the bone in that mine for you. I sent money home every single week. I gave Olivia everything I had. The insurance policy that paid for all this"-he gestured around the renovated house-"I paid for that too. With my life, I thought."

"That's in the past!" his mother shrieked, her face contorted with anger. "You can't come back and ruin it for everyone! Think about us, for once!"

"I am thinking about you," Ethan said, his voice turning to ice. "I'm thinking about how you all cashed my death certificate and didn't look back."

His sister, Sarah, started to cry, but they weren't tears of remorse. They were tears of frustration. "You're being so selfish! Daniel is a good man. They're happy! Why do you have to come back and spoil it?"

"Yeah," Mark chimed in, puffing out his chest. "Maybe you should have just stayed dead."

The words hit Ethan, but they didn't hurt in the way they would have three years ago. They simply confirmed what he already knew. He was alone. He had no family here.

"Don't worry," Ethan said, his eyes locking onto Olivia's. "I'll be out of your lives soon enough. As soon as you sign the papers and give me back what's mine."

"There's nothing to give back!" Daniel snapped. "The money is gone. We invested it. In our businesses. Our life."

"Then you can liquidate," Ethan said calmly. "I'm sure a judge will agree."

At the mention of a judge, Olivia's composure completely broke. She knew exactly what that meant. Public humiliation, financial ruin, and a possible prison sentence.

Her strategy changed again. The pleading woman was gone, replaced by a desperate, theatrical victim.

"Ethan, how can you do this to me?" she wailed, clutching her chest. "After everything I've been through? Losing you... it nearly killed me. I had to find a way to go on. For the family!"

"You seem to have recovered remarkably well," Ethan noted dryly.

Suddenly, his mother stumbled forward, her hand pressed to her forehead. "My heart... I can't breathe... Ethan, look what you're doing to your mother!"

It was an old trick, one she'd used his whole life to get her way. He remembered her faking dizzy spells whenever his father tried to argue with her about money. He didn't even flinch.

But this time, she added a new element. As she "stumbled" past him, she brought her hand back and slapped him hard across the face. The sound cracked through the tense silence.

"You ungrateful boy!" she screamed, her face red with genuine rage, the fake illness forgotten. "After everything Olivia has done for us, you come here to tear it all down! We don't want you! Go away!"

Ethan didn't react. He just stood there, the red mark on his cheek a stark symbol of this final, absolute betrayal. He looked at his mother, the woman who had brought him into the world, and felt nothing but a vast, empty coldness.

"I see," he said softly. The last ember of attachment to them was extinguished. He was free.

He turned his back on his mother's furious face and his father's weak silence. He looked directly at Olivia, who was watching him with a strange mix of fear and hope, perhaps thinking the slap had worked.

"This changes nothing," he told her, his voice firm. "The divorce is happening. I'll have my lawyer contact you tomorrow. Be ready."

Olivia' s face fell. Desperation made her reckless. "Wait! What do you want? Money? Is that it? Fine! We'll give you money! How much?"

Daniel looked at her, shocked. "Olivia, what are you doing?"

"Just tell us a number!" she pleaded, ignoring Daniel. "We can work this out. And the boy... little Leo... you wouldn't... you wouldn't do anything to hurt him, would you? We can... you can adopt him, legally! We can say he's yours!"

The offer was so grotesque, so morally bankrupt, that Ethan almost laughed. She was willing to sell her own child's identity to save herself.

"You're unbelievable," he said, shaking his head slowly.

Without another word, he turned and walked away. He didn't look back. He heard his mother yelling after him, his sister crying, Daniel trying to comfort a frantic Olivia. The sounds faded as he walked down the street to his old truck.

He climbed inside and sat there for a long moment, the silence of the cab a stark contrast to the chaos he'd just left behind. He wasn't sad. He wasn't heartbroken. He felt... hollow. Purged.

His phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out and saw the name on the screen: "Boss Thompson."

He answered.

"Ethan," Thompson's deep, gravelly voice came through the line. It was a voice that commanded respect, a voice used to giving orders that were never questioned. "How was the reunion?"

Ethan leaned his head back against the seat. "About as expected."

There was a pause. "Which means they chose the money."

"They chose the money," Ethan confirmed.

"Good," Thompson said, a note of satisfaction in his voice. "Sentiment is a liability. Now you have nothing holding you back. What's your next move?"

Ethan thought of Olivia' s desperate offers, his mother's slap, his father's silence. He thought of the life they had stolen from him and the comfortable new one they had built.

"My next move," Ethan said, his voice hardening into the resolve he'd learned in South Africa, "is to take it all back."

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